Gaia Stamp Pack Quick Start Guide

Gaia Stamp Pack Quick Start Guide

This guide will get you started with the Backwoods Gaming Stamp Pack you have just purchased. This guide assumes you have already purchased, downloaded, and imported the pack from the Unity Asset Store as well as purchased, downloaded, and installed Gaia. As stated in the Asset Store descriptions and the pack pages here, the stamp packs will not work without Gaia. You have to purchase it separately.

The steps below may reference images by an image number. The image thumbnails are shown below the list. Images go from left to right. Image 4 being the fourth image in the first row of images, Image 6 being the second image in the second row, etc. (Based on default row size of 4 images per row. As our site is responsive, if you are viewing on a smaller screen, you may see smaller rows. Just remember numbers increment left to right and rows increment from top to bottom.) Simply click on an image to see the full size version.

Open your Gaia Manager tab. If you do not yet have a Gaia Manager tab in your project, you may open one by clicking Window -> Gaia -> Show Gaia Manager from the Unity top menu. I usually drag it to be a tab in the same window as my inspector and lighting tabs. (See image 1)

Once you are in your Gaia Manager tab, click the GX button and then click the Installed button. (Note grayed out buttons in image 1)

In the installed list, you may see several company names including Backwoods Gaming. Click the little arrow to the left of Backwoods Gaming and a list of our packs you have installed should unfold. This may be one pack (as shown in image 1), or several.

Click the arrow to the left of the stamp pack you wish to work with. This will unfold a list of three options. If you unfold those options you will then see several buttons. These are the buttons that control whether or not the stamps will work with Gaia or not. (image 1 shows buttons as well)

Stamps must first be enabled before they will work with Gaia. If you have not enabled a stamp and try to use it, you will see the error message shown in image 2. To enable all of the stamps within the pack, press the button to enable the entire pack (image 3). Note in the image that the stamp files are in the matching folder in Gaia as they were within the stamp packs in earlier images. Enabling moves the stamps from the pack folders into the Gaia folders so Gaia is able to use them. Similarly if you were to click the disable entire pack button, it would move stamps from the Gaia folders back to the pack.

You can also enable and disable individual stamps. Note that in image 4 after clicking the button for stamp 004, it now shows back in the pack’s original folders and not in the Gaia folders. If I were click the button again, it would move it back to the Gaia folders.

After stamps are enabled, you are ready to use them. First you must have a terrain and stamper in your scene hierarchy. If you don’t have either, simply go into the Gaia Manager and after clicking the Standard button, click Create Terrain & Show Stamper. (image 5) If you already have a terrain and are just stamping, you can add a stamper to your scene’s hierarchy by clicking the Advanced button in Gaia Manager, unfolding the 2. Create your Terrain… foldout, and clicking the Show Stamper button. (image 6)

Click Stamper in your scene hierarchy and view your Inspector tab. You will now need to drag and drop the stamp you want to work with into the Stamp Preview in the Stamper. As stated before, make sure you are dragging an enabled stamp (blue arrow on image 7) and not a disabled stamp (red arrow on image 7).

You should now see an image similar to that shown in image 8. (Your view will be different depending on which stamp you are viewing and what your scene view is set for – note the <- Persp in top right corner. ISO will look slightly different.)

For me, I’m never happy with defaults. The stamps are based off of original heightmaps that start at 8kmx8km. So the first thing I usually do is decrease the height to 5 (for a 2048×2048 unity terrain tile) as shown in image 9. At that point I will eyeball it and may change to 7 or even up to 10. A lot of this will depend on the end goal of the terrain you are looking to create.

You’ll notice in image 9 that at a height of 5, almost everything is under sea level. To remedy this, we will remove the check from Ground Base (image 10) and then either drag the Y transform arrow(identified by the green arrow in image 11) or increasing the Position Y by adjusting slider or increasing number (identified by the blue arrow in image 11). As you can see in this image, you now only have some river areas and the majority of the terrain is above water.

You could also raise it further and have the entire terrain above sea level as seen in image 12. You could still put in your own lakes, ponds, and/or rivers, but they would be done by putting in individual water planes and not controlled by sea level.

At this point you are ready to press the Stamp button and continue with your normal Gaia operations!